The present specification refers to a mechanism for fastening each rail of a railroad to sleepers supporting it, in the specific case that said sleepers are made of wood, as in railways still out-of-date owing to their limited traffic, in railway lines in developing countries, and, in general, where minimal maintenance costs are essential, without impairing very good performances in the type of traffic they render for example, in case of exclusive goods service.
The mechanism of the invention performs an elastic fastening of the rail to a sleeper, having a parallel wedging effect, and secures a very good fastening, in addition to a series of complementary advantages which will be enumarated along the present description.
Also, this invention contemplates aspects of this mechanism making easy its implantation and maintenance.
1. Field of the Invention
This invention will find application in the industry devoted to railways.
2. Related Art
Although there is, at present, a more advanced technology than the utilization of the traditional wood sleepers for making up a railway, due to economical reasons said wood sleepers are still being used, both in developing countries, where the investment standing is limited, as well as their technological capacity, and in developed countries, in this case in railways where investments for replacing wood sleepers by others more modern would be scantily profitable, and, then, the railway maintenance costs are too much high.
To date, for fastening a rail to the corresponding wood sleepers, nailing systems are used, by friction or by threading, so that both vibrations and the unitary forces, mainly those horizontal, acting on the rails when passing the trains, are transmitted, through said nailing means, to the sleeper holes involved.
Furthermore, said elements, already when being nailed into the holes, have a tendency towards splitting the wood and causing fissures, in which dampness due to the rain water, which favours corrosion effects, accumulates, and also an evident nailing slackening is produced, causing the track grid to grow weak.
This gradual slackening of anchorages compels to a constant maintenance under the supervision of skilled staff the costs of whose are very high.